


a horror so deep only ritual can contain it

by arekiras



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (not rlly talked about In Detail but they're both there), Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Character Study, Coping, Gen, Hair Dyeing, Haircuts, M/M, No Dialogue, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, i shaved my head and decided to project so sue me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arekiras/pseuds/arekiras
Summary: jon, and jon's hair, over the years leading up to the apocalypse.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 84





	a horror so deep only ritual can contain it

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @feargender

One of the only memories Jon has of his mother is of her hands in his hair, braiding it into two plaits behind his ears, her lips on the crown of his head, right at the part in his hair. Like most childhood memories, it isn’t clear, many more than five senses cobbled together into a blurred approximation of reality. The pleasant tingling in his scalp, her gentle breathing in tandem with the steady work of her fingers in his thick dark hair. The warm, floral scent of her perfume, filling his nose with striking clarity. His grandmother had given him her partially used bottle of that perfume after she passed, and he sprayed it on his stuffed animals and pillows, but it didn’t smell the same as it did on her skin. Eventually, he ran out, and bought more of the same kind as a teen. It smelled even more foreign applied to his own skin, sacrilegious, and he scrubbed his wrists raw trying to remove it. 

His grandmother didn’t have the dexterity to replicate his mother’s lovely braids in his hair, and somehow he never sat still for her, so they stopped soon after he moved in to live with her. His hair, after that, was kept tidily trimmed just above his shoulders, no nonsense just his like grandmother was. He went to the same salon all through grade school, the smell of heat from blow dryers and hair products making his head spin and eyes droop. 

When he came out of the closet at sixteen, he did it rather dramatically, disappearing into the bathroom with the kitchen scissors and coming out with a messy, uneven chop, long brown locks of his hair in the trash can. His grandmother had clicked her tongue, tutting and breathing out a sigh and bringing him to the barber shop next door to the salon to get a rather utilitarian, but practical, boy’s haircut. 

She had always been sensible to the end, and had no time for his extensive theatrics. 

His experimentation with his hair at university had earned him little more than a dry laugh and an, “Honestly, Jon,” when he came home to visit. 

The first time he dyed it, it was in Georgie’s dorm bathroom, eyes watering with the fumes as she worked the bright blood red dye into his hair, which they had bleached a sick yellow. It had been much shorter then, an awkward length while he tried to decide whether or not he’d allow his personal taste or social dysphoria win. Much of his time at university existed in that way, between comfort in his body and comfort with his body. 

He liked the feeling of Georgie’s hands in his hair more than he liked the dye, the process better than the color. He wasn’t convinced red was for him, but the change had made his skin stop itching, and every time he caught his reflection, he smiled. During his years in school, he cycled between many colors, changing his hair any time he began to feel like he needed to crawl out of his skin, like he would open his mouth and something horrible would come scraping out. 

Once Jon entered the professional sphere, this stopped. He figured he could pursue a career in parapsychology, or have green hair, but not both. 

When Sasha had uncovered some ancient photo of him with a blue undercut, she and Tim had a long, hardy laugh at his expense, the image completely incongruous of the buttoned up Jon with the dark, tidy chin length hair before them. He had pretended to be vaguely annoyed, but had tucked his hair back self consciously in his office later, scratching at his scalp and feeling that itching need for change. Exhibit a bit of control over his rapidly evolving life, even if a haircut or box dye-job wouldn’t actually combat the massive pile of statements still looming over him. 

After Jane Prentiss’ attack on the Archives, he didn’t spare much of a thought to his hair. He kept it tied back in a small bun, or a tiny, poor imitation of the sort of braid his mother used to do. His hands scraping through the locks, oily and in need of a wash, were a far cry from her soothing movements in his memory. 

During his last shower, he swore he saw a worm coming up from the drain, and hadn’t really spent the time caring for it that he should have, after that. 

When he moved in with Georgie he had been surprised, gazing at his reflection in her bathroom mirror, that it had managed to grow to nearly brush his shoulders. That evening, after a lengthy shower during which he kept his eyes shut tight and didn’t look at the drain even once, he sat in front of the couch while she combed out every last knot and tangle. He mentioned the memory he had of his mother, and it only occurred to him to worry that it might be a strange thing to say after she didn’t reply for several minutes.

Then, he felt her hands separating his hair and carefully begin on one of two braids, situated just behind his ears. It wasn’t the same at all; Jon was twenty-eight and on Georgie’s living room floor, the Admiral in his lap filling his nose with the scent of cat hair and tuna flavored kibble instead of anyone’s perfume, but tension bled from his shoulders and spine all at once and he released a heavy sigh. 

During his coma, Georgie hadn’t allowed the nurses to cut his hair, though she never told him this. He simply Knew, sat in his office with a hair tie between his teeth, half of it caught in his hands as he pulled it up into a bun atop his head. He also knew, in a completely unrelated way, that if he thanked her for it, it wouldn’t be welcome. Still, he was glad for it, the length of it, the effort it required to maintain, kept him grounded. He wound it round and round and round his finger while he read statements, pulled it close to the scalp when the hunger for a statement gnawed at him in every cell. 

During their third night at the safe house, Jon finds the old case in the bathroom cabinet containing the ancient electric clippers. Martin sits on the toilet and Jon sits on the cold tiles in front of him, knees pressed into his chest. Martin gathers the long hair into three small ponytails and snips them off with the rather dull kitchen scissors before turning on the clippers and starting at the base of Jon’s neck. It’s slow work, the clippers get clogged and have to be cleaned often, but by the end both of them are covered in hair which Martin sweeps up while Jon stands in the tub to avoid making more of a mess before rinsing the remains that dust his neck and shoulders and face down the drain. 

Martin stops sweeping and looks up at him standing there, before kissing his nose and saying, “It suits you.” Jon runs his hands over the soft fuzz of it before turning the water on and flinching at the grinding of the old pipes. 

After the Change, it doesn’t grow. Though, under the great bulging Eye that gobbles up the entire world from horizon to horizon in its sickly glow, Jon suspects that it will take a bit more than a box of hair dye to settle his frayed nerves. 


End file.
